A Further Perspective

When Senator Ted Cruz delivered the keynote address at last Wednesday’s inaugural In Defense of Christians Summit in Washington, D.C., he was expected to place a much-needed spotlight on the plight of the ancient and persecuted Christian communities of the Middle East.

Instead, under the guise of supporting Israel, Cruz placed the spotlight squarely on himself, and by so doing inflicted untold damage to the cause of Christianity’s survival in the Middle East.

There’s been some misinformation about exactly what Cruz said to the crowd and how it was received. (You can see for yourself here.)

First Cruz offered a few strong remarks about Middle Eastern Christians and the need for solidarity with Jews (all of which were unanimously applauded). Then he began making increasingly provocative statements about Jews and Israel, seemingly gauging the audience’s reaction with each remark. He said:

The violent ambitions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have been condemned across the world: in Europe and the Middle East, by Sunni nations and Shiite ones, and by sworn enemies like Israel and Iran. Now, even Pope Francis has joined the call for ISIS to be stopped.

The recent military successes of ISIS, and the barbarous slaughter of women and children and the beheading of two American journalists sent a new round of national security chills throughout the country. These grisly events were stark reminders of the resourcefulness and dogged determination of terrorists hell-bent on inflicting grievous harm to Americans.

President Obama has vowed “to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL.” This vital campaign will require maximum efforts by the CIA and special forces to achieve enhanced intelligence and to execute effective covert operations.

What should we make of the summer soldier/sunshine patriot who sits in the White House and acts both as commander in chief and golfer in chief — never allowing the former to get in the way of the latter? Will he shrink from the crisis presented by the explosive and horrific growth of the Islamic jihad movement, or will he somehow transform himself into someone capable of leading the nation and the free world in a time of war?

If only rhetorically and if only for a few news cycles, Barack Obama moved from flight to fight in his speech on Wednesday night. He stopped doing everything he could to appease a deadly and implacable enemy, and even to deny its very existence. At great long last, he acknowledged the need to confront and destroy this sadistic and monstrous foe.

Thirteen years have now passed since al Qaeda terrorists carried out their attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. If not for the valiant efforts of the passengers of United 93, the White House or Capitol Hill might have been added to that list. Their courage would save thousands of lives.

Yet 2,977 people would perish on September 11, 2001. I saw the pictures of every one of those men, women and children at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum last May. As I noted at the time, the exhibit made it clear who was responsible for those pictures being there and the religious ideology that motivated them.

Americans are outraged over the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff. We all want President Obama to defeat these savages. For any plan to be credible, it must acknowledge four important facts.

(1) Without oil, ISIS has no economy:

In 2012, crude oil was 84 percent of Iraq’s exports. Only 33 percent of Iraq’s GDP is generated from the private sector and many of those workers get much of their business from government contracts.

Currently, ISIS controls seven oil fields in Northern Iraq that produce 30,000 barrels per day (bpd). This is small compared to overall Iraq production in August, which was reported to be 3.1 million bpd, of which 2.44 million bpd was exported.

Most of country’s oil is in the south. The only place in northern Iraq with appreciable oil reserves is near Kirkuk, producing one million bpd. Any strategy against ISIS must involve keeping these terrorists away from Kirkuk and also destroying the few fields now under ISIS control. ISIS also controls refineries in Syria that produce 50,000 barrels per day. These should be targeted for destruction also.

I always thought it would be difficult to imagine a period in which the West would be more adrift than the 1970s. Being a child at the time, I was spared consciousness of most of that miserable decade. Thus far, however, the second decade of the 2000s seems likely to give the 10 years that spawned Watergate, stagflation, the Carter presidency, the Oil Crisis, Idi Amin, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Jim Jones, Pol Pot, the Red Brigades, and the Iranian Revolution (to name just a few of the star attractions) a serious run for its money as a byword for Western decline.

One everyday sign of this malaise is the fact that much of the West remains, as in the seventies, mired in what’s now called the Long Slump. And persistently unhealthy economies are usually symptomatic of an unwillingness to acknowledge deeper problems. Examples are most Western governments’ reluctance to accept that it’s game-over for the regulatory and welfare state as-we-knew-it, or to do something about the growing cancer of crony-capitalism.

The merger of U.S. hamburger giant Burger King with Tim Horton’s, Canada’s favorite coffee shop, will create the world’s third largest “fast food” company with a total of 18,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. It is also a piercing wake-up call for the U.S. because the new company will make its global headquarters in Canada’s province of Ontario. That underscores what savvy business everywhere have learned, namely, that the United States is an increasingly less attractive place to do business. “Canada has quietly and politely become, well, more AMERICAN than America,” says columnist Stephen Green.

Since 2003, more than thirty-five major American companies have moved their headquarters and reincorporated overseas.

President Obama said last Thursday that he doesn’t “have a strategy yet” to combat ISIS in the Middle East. Worse is what Obama didn’t say — not one word about how to prevent ISIS from attacking us right here in the U.S. That’s despite security experts warning Congress repeatedly that ISIS’s gory threats to spill American blood should be taken seriously.

Compare Obama’s inaction to Prime Minister David Cameron’s decisive action. After British security experts raised the terrorist threat assessment there to “severe,” meaning an attack is “highly likely,” Cameron called for revoking passports of British citizens returning from Syria and Iraq and cracking down on jihadist recruiters, even by censoring the Internet and rounding up extremist organizers. These proposals are sparking a lively debate in Britain over balancing security and civil rights.

Attorney General Eric Holder has been hailed widely for his “leadership” last week in Ferguson, Missouri. But he was following the crowd rather than leading it during his visit. He is famous for calling America a “nation of cowards” for refusing to speak honestly about race, but he shows no such inclination himself. He spent most of his time in Ferguson telling protesters exactly what they wanted to hear. The top law enforcement officer in the land considered it leadership to confirm them in their “mistrust” of law enforcement officials.

It was a display not of sober leadership but of raw politics, with Holder looking like a candidate as he mingled and joked with the crowds. Instead of warning the protesters against automatically assuming that officer Darren Wilson was racially motivated in shooting Michael Brown, Holder emboldened them in that view. “I wanted the people of Ferguson to know that I personally understood that mistrust. I wanted them to know that while so much else may be uncertain, this attorney general and this Department of Justice stands with the people of Ferguson,” he said.

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